Microserfs

Supermodel; Superhighway. Coincidence?

The Boris and Natasha nickname is really catching on. We actually use the names to their faces. I think they love it.

I keep forgetting Susan’s rich, but she is. She came back from grocery shopping at Draeger’s with edible flowers ($1.99 a tub) and Bear Head mushrooms ($ 19.99/lb.—they look like white coral). Karla and I buy noodle- helper-style boxed products at Price-Costco. We’re going to have to start eating better. Food is too good here, and eating crap makes you feel like such an outsider in the Bay Area.

Rants are the official communication mode of the ‘90s.

Karla asked Dusty what she thought of Lego, and this triggered a mega-rant:

“What do I think of Lego? Lego is, like, Satan’s playtoy. These seemingly ‘educational’ little blocks of connectable fun and happiness have irrevocably brainwashed entire generations of youth from the information-dense industrialized nations into developing mind-sets that view the world as unitized, sterile, inorganic, and interchangeably modular — populated by bland limbless creatures with cultishly sweet smiles.”

(“Minifigs” are what the tiny Lego people are called — Dusty must learn the correct terminology.)

“Lego is directly or indirectly responsible for everything from postmodern architecture (a crime) to middle class anal behavior over the perfect lawn. You worked at Microsoft, Dan, you know them — their lawns … you know what I mean.

“Lego promotes an overly mechanical worldview which once engendered, is rilly, rilly impossible to surrender.”

“Anything else, Dusty?”

“Yes. Lego is, like, the perfect device to enculturate a citizenry intolerant of smell, intestinal by-products, nonadherence to unified standards, decay, blurred edges, germination, and death. Try imagining a forest made of Lego. Good luck. Do you ever see Legos made from ice? dung? wood? iron? and sphagnum moss? No — grotacious, or what?”

“Sure, Dusty, but what do you think of Michael’s product idea — his coding?”

“It’s rilly, rilly brilliant.”

We’ve decided that we must have entertainment to break the monotony of coding and work.

We tried going to movies at the Shoreline Cineplex, but movies at a theater take FOREVER to watch — no fast forward. And VCR rental movies take forever to watch, even using the FFWD button.

Then Karla accidentally discovered this incredible time-saving secret — foreign movies with subtitles! It’s like the crack cocaine equivalent of movies. We watched a Japanese movie — an artistic one, at that (Kurosawa’s No Regrets for Our Youth)—in less than an hour. All you have to do is blast directly through to the subtitles, speed-read them, and then blip out the rest. It’s so efficient it’s scary.

“Why can’t they subtitle English movies?” asked Karla. “I mean, they do books- on-tape for commuters. Subtitled English movies would fill a potentially big niche. No one has time anymore.”

Mr. Ideology himself (Boris) walked in, and Ethan couldn’t resist telling him that he’d run a search on Lenin on an on-line encyclopedia, and it turns out Lenin’s name means nothing. “It’s a made up name — like Sting — he just showed up at the dacha one morning and said, ‘Call me Lenin.’”

Todd responded by saying, “Just goes to show you how he was postmodern a century ahead of his time.”

Dusty was trying to tell us all about “Mehrwert“—surplus value per unit of time/labor: “A worker creates more value than that for which he is compensated. You know?”

Michael went purple, like a Burger King manager who hears one of his employees discuss unionization.

And then Karla screwed Michael’s notions of production up even further by passing along a meme somebody spammed her on the Net that day, that any multiple of 6, minus one, is a prime number. Easy as this was to disprove, all work stopped immediately as everybody set out to prove its validity.

Todd pointed out something I thought was really true. He said that when future archaeolgists dig up the remains of California, they’re going to find all of these gyms and all of this scary-looking gym equipment, and they’re going to assume that we were a culture obsessed with torture.

Went for late coffee at the Posh Bagel on Main Street in Los Altos. The white lights in the trees were so pretty. Human beings can’t be all that bad.

SUNDAY

Dusty is furious with Todd. She discovered a collection of cans of aerosol “religious sprays” he had hidden in his cupboard — like “Aerosol Stigmata” and “Santa Barbara in a Can.” His mom sends them to him from Port Angeles. She buys them from a Catholic mail-order house in Philadelphia. It’s so weird, but these sprays really exist.

Todd sulked: “She threw them out like time-expired antibiotics.”

In order to foster a less combative working environment, Michael and I are trying to think of the most apolitical environment possible. We finally hit upon Star Trek as a zero-politics zone. So I introduced the notion of TrekPolitiks to the office.

Susan said, “Ever notice how, like, nobody ever goes shopping on Star Trek? They’re a totally post-money society. If they want a banana they simply photocopy one on the replicator. Substitute Malaysia or Mexico for the replicator, and make Palo Alto the Bridge, and bingo: RIGHT NOW = STAR TREK.”

It’s true.

If you think about it.

I added, “Ever notice how they never have to report to anybody on Star Trek? No suits zoom in from Star Fleet Corporate and hold them fiscally responsible for frying a dilithium crystal doing doughnuts in the Delta Quadrant. Or Star Fleet Marketing, for that matter.” (Pointed glares at Ethan.)

Karla likes the notion of TrekPolitiks. “Left vs. right is obsolete. Politics is, in the end, about biology, information, diversification, numbers, numbers, and numbers — all candy coated with charisma and guns.”

Karla like myself is of the new apolitical pick-and-choose style of citizen. I think politics is soon going to resemble a J. Crew catalogue more than some 1776 ideal. If somebody wants to run for office, they had better be able to explain why they want to run for office. Wanting to be a candidate seems, in itself, reason for exclusion.

Dusty said, “Thomas Jefferson never anticipated Victoria’s Secret catalogues and media-induced social atomization. Just think — we’re rapidly approaching a world composed entirely of jail and shopping.” She paused to consider this, said, “Grotacious!” then she went for a jog.

Dad had his second callback from Delta.

Karla apparently noticed my breathing the other day when I was carrying the trash cans to the end of the driveway. She has decided I should start going to the gym. “You have to add more megs to your hard drive. I’m going, too.” She’s right — we both need meat on us — excuse me — we both need more crystal lattice added on to our drives.

Every time I look at Karla, she changes and changes, and now I realize other men are looking at her and this makes me have to look at myself, and what I see is sort of scrawny. Suddenly Karla can date higher on the geek food chain than me if she wants to — she can date all the Phils-from-Apples of this world — she has entered the realms of buffness and cleft chins. I care about being with her too much to lose her to a … Phil unit. To lose her ever, to anyone. I can’t imagine losing her. I must make myself stronger. I must build a better me. I must become the Bionic Man.

It turns out that if you tape TV shows that are close-captioned, you CAN have English language subtitles. Our entertainment universe has multiplied itself!